


Take a Chance on Me

by neyvenger (jjjat3am), saltstreets



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Bickering, English National Team, Future Fic, M/M, lots of bickering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:11:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6364432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/neyvenger, https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gary and Carra co-manage England. It goes about as- actually, it goes a lot better than expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take a Chance on Me

**Author's Note:**

> A collab! A collab born of enthusiastic late-night chatting and now turned into a fully-fledged future fic aka wildly self-indulgent speculation :D Probably about as close to kidfic as this pairing gets.
> 
> Title in the timeless tradition of ABBA. Of course.

 

 

By all accounts, they get conned into the job. Sure, Gary’s been wanting to coach the national team forever, so much so that when he finally gets asked, everything after ‘yes’ just sort of blurs together into a mass of words he doesn’t hear over the sound of a childhood dream coming true. Presumably somewhere in that blur was the information that he would be taking on both the job and one James Carragher along with it. But Gary doesn’t exactly know that until he sees it in writing, a sort of nasty ‘surprise!’ mixed into an otherwise perfect contract.

 

Carra’s situation is somewhat similar, except he’s lucid enough at nine in the morning to hear the part about co-managing with Gary Neville. He says yes anyway. Who wouldn’t? Gary’s ruined enough dreams for him with United, he’s not taking another.

 

Besides, they’ve worked together before and it’s not like anything exploded. MNF was great fun, and learning a balancing act between insults and friendly banter was unexpectedly rewarding.

 

Still, Gary’s shriek of surprise when he opens the door to the office and finds Carra already doing paperwork approached the upper realms of decibels audible to the human ear, and Carra jumps about a foot in the ear and reflexively lets fly a string of insults.

 

In their defence, they haven’t seen each other in a few years. Their working relationship needs some patching up.

 

The first argument they have lasts exactly 45 minutes and by the end they’ve decided to both claim the title of ‘manager’, despite being disgruntled by the camaraderie it implies. It’s just the first of the lesser evils that they’ll be dealing with.

 

*

 

Their first press conference is a mixed success.

 

Barely three minutes in they devolve into a heated yet informative disagreement (Gary refuses to call it an argument because he’s a _professional,_ and he doesn’t get in arguments during his own press conferences) about tactics that raises more questions than it answers. The FA speaker interrupts them on the microphone, and they break away, winded and red-faced, turning to the journalists that are considerably more frightened than they were when the two of them walked into the room.

 

Still, they end up being unexpectedly harmonious in most of their replies, even though it seems like another eruption is looming on the horizon throughout. It goes fairly smoothly after the initial rockiness.

 

One journalist is particularly dismissive of Carra’s lack of managerial experience, at which point Gary leans forward, frown in place and all traces of affability gone.

 

“What newspaper are you from?...oh, The Sun, I see. Well, you obviously haven’t done your research. Jamie’s played over 800 games as a professional football player, and spent the past three years assistant-managing at Liverpool. He has more tactical knowledge in his little finger than you do in your oversized pimply head. So lay off.”

 

It’s such an unexpected defence that Carra has to bite his bottom lip trying not to grin _too_ smugly. There’s something awfully satisfying about the way Gary’d said _The Sun_ with that frozen derision in his tone that he usually reserved for woefully ineffectual backlines.

 

Later someone inevitably questions Gary about his mixed tenure at Valencia and Carra cuts them off with a casual scoff. “Do you know who you’re speaking to, lad? This is Gary Neville, he’s won seven Premier League titles.”

 

“Eight, Jamie.”

 

“Eight, whatever. He’s drowning in Premier League titles. You’re just drowning in stupid.”

 

It may not be the most eloquent argument, but the sudden composed unity seems to take the room aback and questions turn to the fitness of the squad. After that, most of the illusions that the media seems to be labouring under about whether or not the Carragher-Neville partnership would be easy to shatter fade. There was still endless speculation as to how long it would take before the entire operation crashed and burned, but no more than usually surrounded the England manager, or managers as the case may be.

 

*

 

Of course, all is not sunshine and roses in the England camp.

 

The offices sometimes reverberate with the sound of their co-managers in a screaming match over something or the other. It usually ends abruptly, when they run out of breath.

Hilary, their poor harassed secretary, constantly found herself worried that she was going to walk into the office and find one of them standing over the bludgeoned corpse of the other, clutching a lamp or a hardback copy of the laws of the game, leading to even more paperwork.

 

Still, they present an eerily united front to the players, none of whom can even remember an instance of them disagreeing. It’s only one time that Gary starts getting carried away, glaring at Carra over his clipboard to correct his pronunciation of Johan Cruyff’s name, but that’s cut off quickly before the players can even realize that they’re witnessing the start of an argument. That had been the agreement day one, a sort of ‘not in front of the children’ rule that postponed all dispute until they were safely out of earshot.

 

Sure, Carra still likes to tweet particularly unflattering photos of Gary yelling during training or filming Gary when he’s eating and posting it on Vine, captioned with snide comments about his diet. But that, as the poet said, was just banter.

 

Gary replies by mentioning that Carra still hasn’t fulfilled his promise of wearing Gary’s United jersey, or by buying a whole packet of Maltesers and eating them in front of a fuming Carra, who’s yelling about blood sugar.

 

The PR department despairs daily.

 

On one memorable occasion Carra tweets a photo of Gary asleep over tactical plans with the caption, 'Thank god he's shut up for once'.

 

It gets a thousand retweets in ten minutes. There are jokes, and then worse jokes, and then it circles Reddit for a bit and comes back to Twitter heavily photoshopped as Gary sleeping during the Yalta Conference, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and so on and so forth.

 

At first Carra makes a few cracks at the state of English football, if a slightly blurry photo of Gary’s face squashed into a sheaf of paper is the most fascinating thing that the internet has to gush over, but then he finds himself looking at that picture in strange moments. Picturing the scenario. How Gary had finally been still, dark circles under his eyes but his face soft in sleep. The wrinkles in his collar and the small grey hairs at his neck. The picture of exhaustion but wearing it with something like grace.

 

That's about where Carra finally pings that he might have himself a problem.

 

Carra starts noticing how he's been going out of his way to make fun of Gary or take photos of Gary or make faces at Gary from behind the camera when Gary's giving interviews in the tunnel. And he starts thinking maybe the connecting link between it all hasn’t been that he's having a laugh, but _Gary_.

 

Gary and how he wants his always attention on him, Carra, and he doesn't want to share. And of course the easiest way to get Gary’s attention has always been to provoke an argument but perhaps....

 

They’re in the office trying to plan out the training focuses for the week of international break when Carra undergoes his revelation. Gary catches him staring and glares defensively.

 

“What? What are you staring at? Is there marker on my face again?” He reaches up to scrape at his face and Carra thinks about how much he likes the way Gary’s eyebrows furrow whenever he’s cross about something.

 

Carra has the feeling that he’s just bitten off rather more than he can chew.

 

*

 

Carra starts looking into alternative tactics in his ongoing quest to achieve monopoly on Gary’s attentions. As a manager and as, well, a grown adult, he doesn’t have to restrict himself to pulling Gary’s metaphorical pigtails. However entertaining that might be.

 

He considers flowers, but figures Gary might faint. Chocolates seem too smarmy. He’s not fourteen years old, honestly. He doesn’t need to serenade Gary and present him some fancy gold box of chocolates to eat while lounging on his daybed, or whatever the fuck romantic posh people got up to.

 

Coffee seems like a safe bet, so next time he goes down to the break room, he brings Gary back a cup.

 

Gary is immediately suspicious.

 

There’s a hot, steaming mug of coffee in front of his face. Usually, that would be a cause of celebration, but the hand that was holding the cup gave good cause for doubt.

 

“What’s this, has it got salt in it or some such rubbish?” he asks, frowning.

 

Carra’s polite smile turns into a grimace and he snorts.

 

“No, you suspicious arsehole. It’s just a cup of coffee. Now will you take it or should I give it to Hilary?”

 

“Hilary doesn’t even like coffee,” Gary mutters, but he does take the offering, albeit gingerly. He takes a cautious sip.

 

It was a perfect cup of coffee in all ways. The exact amount of sugar Gary liked, the exact amount of cream, piping hot but not scalding. Bliss.

 

“How d’you know how much sugar I take?” he asks, still suspicious even if the coffee had mellowed him out a little. Carra has meandered his way across the room, absently peering at some tactical plans.

 

“Because I pay attention, Neville. Now, tell me what happened while I was out.”

 

It’s a statement that takes Gary somewhat aback. Because he knows, objectively, that Carra is observant. Carra’s always been sharp-eyed, far more than he immediately appears. He’s always caught onto the little details. It’s what had made him a good pundit, and a good manager now. Gary knows this. He just hadn’t thought that Carra also paid such close attention to him, Gary.

 

And so, Gary starts noticing as well. Noticing all the little things that Carra does. And has been doing. The way he always holds open the door for everyone that’s coming behind him. The way he instinctively smiles at small children, who seem to universally adore him. The way he never sits with the window behind him if he can help it and closes all the doors, because he hates it when it’s drafty. How Hilary is sweet on him but he never seems to notice. And the way it makes something in Gary’s stomach run hot and queasy.

 

Noticing Carra brings Gary around to the inevitable question of when Carra had become less of a colleague and far more of a necessary fixture in his life.

 

He's pretty sure that he’d never signed off on this change but he's also pretty sure that he’s very much alright with it, and it’s that more than anything else that sends him into panic mode.

 

He considers calling Giggsy, but he knows Giggsy is constantly busy dealing with United and everything that comes with it, so he skypes Spain that very evening. Phil has always been a bit more sensitive to feelings and other such rubbish.

 

He blurts it out as soon as Phil appears on his screen (always a bit more tan than he remembers him).

 

“Why didn’t you tell me I liked Carra?”

 

Phil’s face morphs in a blurry look of surprise. “Erm. You two haven’t really disliked each other for years, I thought,” he says, cautious as if afraid of setting off an avalanche.

 

“No, I mean, I _like_ Carra,” Gary says, trying not to die inside. It's all so grade school. He’s an _adult_ with a _job,_ for chrissakes.

 

Phil sighs heavily with a rush of static through Gary’s laptop speakers. He gives Gary a look that says clearly, _I don’t have time to deal with your relationship problems._ “Why don't you talk to Carra about it?”

 

Gary pales at the suggestion.

 

“Take him for a pint. Maybe a dinner.” Phil doesn't know how to hint any harder than that. He's done his best here. This is about the extent of romance the Neville brothers are capable of, and to push it further would only be to invite disaster.

 

There’s a beat of silence as Gary tries to collect his thoughts and Phil daydreams longingly about his warm spot in the sun.

 

“Phil?”

 

“Yeah, Gaz?”

 

“Remember that thing we used to make the new kids do? Flirt with the mop?”

 

“Yyeees,” Phil says, reluctantly. This could go nowhere good.

 

“...could you play the mop? And then I could pretend you’re Carra and practice? You can do a good Scouse accent, right?”

 

“Bye, Gaz.”

 

*

 

Gary goes against everything he believes in and follows his brother’s advice.

 

It’s 4pm already and Carra’s on his fifth cup of coffee and hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast except for some biscuits. Gary’s own stomach is rumbling and he’s just hungry enough that it makes him reckless.

 

“Er, Carra? Would you like to take tea or something? We could go down the street.”

 

Carra looks up from his papers, blinks at him for a moment.

 

“‘Take tea?’ What is this, Downton Abbey? Take tea, christ, shall we ring for the butler and ask him to, to,” Carra pauses for a moment to come up with something posh to say before giving up. “Can’t you just say nip down to the pub like the rest of us plebs?”

 

Gary’s eyelid twitches at Carra’s mocking tone. “I didn’t say dinner because it’s too early but I’m hungry and you’re hungry and we have a perfectly nice English phrase for something before dinner, why not use it?” He warms to his theme. “Although I suppose I can’t expect much from you, since you barely speak the language!”

 

The conversation can only head downwards from there. Gary's halfway through a gleeful and blistering indictment of Carra’s way of speaking when he remembers. He's trying to ask Carra out on a date.

 

"-painfully incoherent." he finishes. Pauses. "Also, did you... _did_ you have time to get a bite to eat?"

 

It is perhaps a testament to the myriad oddities of their relationship that Carra hardly blinks at the abrupt detente.

 

“Nope. Neither do you, by the way, since we're supposed to go over these training plans.” he points a meaningful finger at a huge stack of papers.

 

Gary takes a deep breath. “We'll order in then. Takeout.”

 

There's another scuffle over what to order and they end up with about twice as much rice as any rational human being could ever eat, but it's nice anyway. They work over the training programme and joke back and forth, Carra folding up a few scrapped sheets into paper airplanes and sending them into the side of Gary's head, Gary retaliating with a barrage of pencil stubs, and before they realise, it's late evening, the setting sun spilling burnt red shadows through the window and the sound of the evening traffic rush buzzing in the background as the day closed up shop.

 

“Done. And look at that- you only got one sheet of paper ruined with soy sauce, Carragher, I’m so proud.”

 

“Oi- that was you spilled it, don’t try and worm out of it.” Carra retorts cheerfully, buttoning up his jacket at Gary locks the office door behind them. “See you tomorrow then?”

 

Gary gives himself a moment to enjoy both the success of their first non-specific, non-definitive dinner date and the prospect of the next day. “Tomorrow. Cheers.”

 

*

 

To the surprise of absolutely everyone, England actually seems to be doing well in their Euros campaign.

 

They cruise through the qualifiers, and are praised highly on a strong, pacey midfield and solid defence with only two conceded goals in ten matches.

 

Amusingly, the two managers are incredibly synchronized on pitch, with videos of them mirroring each other’s gestures, pointing out plays and crossing their arms at the same time, even shouting at the fourth official simultaneously on more than one occasion.

 

The football philosophies that had had the potential to clash horribly actually make up something new and exciting. If it’s the work of long hours together pouring over stats and videos and arguing until their voices turn hoarse, well, the media doesn’t have to know everything.

 

Midway through the season they give up on not hugging after wins.

 

And even then, it isn’t as if those long hours are particularly terrible, even less so as time goes on. That first take-out lunch morphs itself into a sort of unspoken agreement when in the midst of a particularly panic-stricken day as they finish up their plan of assault for the group stages, Carra silently hands Gary three different take-out menus.

 

*

 

The space allocated the English management is small but it has a mini-fridge which someone -someone who hadn’t entirely though their actions through, Gary considers- had stocked with some beers. It entirely unprofessional of them, because they have a very, _very_ important match the next day but before Gary can try to put together something like a responsible protest, Carra is whipping out a bottle opener, and then they’re on the sofa, drinking. It’s reminiscent of the other times that they’ve been in similar situations, take-out cartons scattered about late into the evening, a few sheaves of paper here and there covered with a medley of Gary’s looping script and Carra’s surprisingly neat handwriting. It could almost be just another late day working, rather than England looking well in a major competition.

 

Carra chucks another beer at Gary, which he catches easily.

 

“Are we ready, then?”

 

Carra raises an eyebrow. “You tell me, boss.”

 

“‘Boss’? Don’t tell me you’re drunk, Jamie. I will personally kill you if you incapacitate yourself before tomorrow’s match.”

 

Carra scoffs. “I’ve barely had a thing, Gary, don’t insult me.” He drops down onto the sofa beside Gary and sinks into the cushions. “At least they gave us a lovely sofa. Although I’m pretty sure we got the smallest hotel of the lot.” He closes his eyes.

 

“ _No,_ Jamie,” Gary says firmly, jabbing him sharply in the side with an elbow, “you are _not_ going to fall asleep here.”

 

“I’m not going to fall asleep,” mumbles Carra, but he doesn’t open his eyes and actually settles further into the sofa.

 

“Jamie,” Gary starts again, but then stops when it becomes apparent that Carra’s already fallen asleep. His head is pressed into the back of the sofa, but it sags dangerously towards where Gary is sitting. Gary watches it all unfold in slow motion, freezing when Carra’s forehead bumps into his shoulder.

 

When it seems like Carra won’t be waking up anytime soon, he lets out a shaky exhale, watching the other man sleep. He makes these soft snoring sounds in his sleep and Gary suspects that it won’t be long until he’s drooling on his suit

 

It's disgusting, Gary thinks to himself, but he can't quite summon up the appropriate ire and he vaguely suspects that he's smiling, which is completely the wrong emotion to have.

 

He decides to let him nap, figures he'll wake up Carra later so his back won't be totally ruined but get some work done in the meantime.

 

He really is very warm.

 

Gary doesn't know exactly when he falls asleep, but the next thing he knows he's opening his eyes blearily to find his head resting on a sheaf of crumpled paper half-scattered on the arm of the sofa and Carra draped unceremoniously over him.

 

He thinks he should probably move at some point, wriggle out from under Carra before he wakes up and he's making a plan of escape when Carra mumbles something half-asleep about _stop thrashing about_ and Gary freezes, unsure if Carra's actually awake or just irritated at him out of sheer subconscious habit. And then he presses even closer, the bastard, his head against Gary's neck, close enough to feel his breath and he's all sleepy warm and unbelievably tolerable when he's quiet like this.

 

Gary's trapped on a sofa with a Carra-shaped blanket all over him. And to his horror, he really doesn't mind the proximity. Doesn’t mind to the point of an unfortunate situation developing in his trousers that Gary wants to attribute to the usual morning affairs but is likely more do with Carra having slipped sideways across Gary's legs, his thigh dangerously close to being between Gary’s own. It's like a nightmare. A soft, comfortable nightmare that he can't get out of.

 

A soft comfortable nightmare that's starting to swear in its sleep and whose worryingly positioned thigh slips into an even worse spot when he starts squirming.

 

There’s a groan and a “Gary? What time is it?” and then Carra's eyes are blinking open slowly, squinting against the morning light that’s coming through the undrawn drapes.

 

“Erm,” Gary starts, staring wide-eyed at Carra, who's more or less stretched out on top of him, inexcusably close.

 

Carra hasn't made much of a move to get off Gary. Gary silently prays for a swift death. He's still half-hard in his trousers.

 

Carra looks down at his wrist. Sees his watch reading 7 AM and suddenly some sort of sleep-impeded switch in his brain flips and he scrambles up, blushing furiously. Gary gingerly rises from where he'd been flattened into the sofa.

 

Their shirts are all wrinkled along with just about everything else. They're probably due for a meeting with someone important soon.

 

And Carra is licking his lips, why is he licking his lips, it's too early for Gary to deal with all of this, and- he’s looking at Gary with some trepidation but stepping minutely closer, leaning in almost as if to-

 

At that moment, Gary’s phone chooses to ring, loudly and obnoxiously, and they jerk apart as if shocked. It’s something about the catering being changed -at this hour? Really?- And then a second later, Hilary pokes her head inside the room, cheerily listing their appointments.

 

They stare at each other after she leaves. Gary tries to search for clues in Carra’s face, but it’s carved from stone and he can’t read him at all. So he does something he’s not used to doing; he runs away.

 

“You heard the lady,” he says, adopting a tone so falsely cheery that it makes him wince. “Time to go back to work.”

 

“Yeah,” Carra mumbles and that’s that.

 

*

 

From then on, things are...strange, between them.

 

They're both hyper aware of every touch, of their proximity. Their insults stop like they stop talking.

 

They still discuss tactics and such, but they don't argue about them like they usually do. The team will still work even if they don't. They've got a good system going. It’s not as if a little bit of personal discomfort is going to damage their working relationship.

 

And anyway, Carra thinks, he’s lived through a solid majority of his life without Gary Neville as a sort of solid presence at his side, so really.

 

(Gary tells himself something similar. Very firmly, glaring at his reflection in the back of spoon.)

 

It shouldn’t bother Carra at all that Gary's not there anymore, that he doesn't feel like he can send Gary texts whenever something happens in his day to day that he thinks would amuse him, or that he can’t needle him on twitter.

 

But, it’s fine. Everything is totally fine. Which is what he tells Stevie after he asks about Gary one time and Carra almost bites his head off.

 

“You can’t let that Manc get under your skin,” Stevie says, carefully, “you know what they’re like.”

 

Carra sighs and makes an affirmative noise. He doesn’t tell him about how he misses Gary even though he’s with him every day, or how now when he looks at Gary, Gary looks away. He doesn’t tell him that Gary Neville’s so deep under his skin it’s as if he’s made a home for himself in Carra’s ribcage, making it hard to breathe sometimes.

 

*

 

Gary meanwhile gets a nagging suspicion that his lengthy arguments with Carra about everything from tactical decisions to the organisation of team photo shoots were making him a better manager.

 

But he tries to ignore it because he'd done very well on his own _thank you very much_ , he doesn't need Jamie Carragher always two inches away, everything is _fine_. They're fine, the team is fine, they're all. Fine.

 

He’s got Scholesy on speed dial now, which hasn’t happened since Becks left for Madrid.

 

But whatever. It doesn’t matter that he can’t quite meet Carra’s eye without thinking about how he’d looked that morning, sleepy and tousled, frowning into the morning as though he wasn’t entirely sure how he’s gotten there. How he’d looked when he’d realised Gary was there, _there-_ there, and how he’d-

 

It doesn’t matter.

 

And then England plays Spain in the quarterfinals, and it becomes quite apparent that it _does_ matter, because in horrible, horrible contrast to the group stages and the round of sixteen which had been planned out and played before most lines of communication had broken down between Gary and Carra, the game goes terribly.

 

By half-time, Gary realises that not spending those late nights up shouting at Carra and pushing him and being pushed back has resulted in a plan of attack that seems to have drawn on the worst bits of both their managing styles. By the eightieth minute he’s about ready to book their flight home. He’s practically reaching for his phone to do so when -and all those awful drippy poems about God being English might have some weight to them after all- there’s a truly terrible tackle in the Spanish box, a penalty is awarded, and before Gary knows it they’ve equalised on the kick.

 

The winner comes five minutes later in the eighty-seventh, an ugly, messy goal that has more to do with a botched defensive play off of a corner kick than anything England’s doing correctly, but fuck it, Gary isn’t going to quibble about beautiful football. Not when they’ve scraped by the skin of their teeth.

 

He can imagine the headlines being typed out by the gleeful wolf pack of journalists even now: a bad pun and a tasteless joke about Germany in the next match from the Mail, something like _Back to Basics_ with a photograph of the players wandering aimless as grade schoolers from the Telegraph. Or whatever. Typical old En-ger-land. Looks good until they don’t.

 

*

 

The celebrating on the team bus back to the hotel is subdued. Carra is staring resolutely out the window and Gary, despite his best efforts, knows that his smiles are frosty.

 

Once they arrive he storms up to his hotel room and puts his phone on silent. He needs to think.

 

Someone -and Gary doesn’t know who- had booked the rooms so that his and Carra’s suites were connected by a door. To whatever mindless bureaucrat who had made the decision it had probably seemed a good one: the two managers could easily use the door to contact each other and collaborate without having to plan out where to meet or whathaveyou, maybe to burst through in the middle of the night with the latest tactical breakthrough that had come to them in a dream.

 

So far it hadn’t really helped, because the first day Carra had practically kicked the door open on Gary just getting out of the shower, and Gary had shrieked in an ear-splittingly high octave that Carra had since refused to let him forget, and then right before the near-disastrous quarterfinal Gary had accidentally opened the door in the middle of the night, half-asleep and meaning to open the bathroom door, and had seen Carra sprawled on his bed, dead to the world and snoring gently. Fact aside that Carra hadn’t bothered to lock the door from his end, the sight had reminded Gary uncomfortably of the time they had almost- well.

 

It hadn’t been very useful so far.

 

Gary paces the room for a few minutes before he hears the sound of Carra’s door slamming, and the unmistakable sound of a shoe being chucked at a wall. He almost chuckles before he remembers that he hasn’t been finding Carra amusing for some time now.

 

He wonders if Carra is pacing in his room as well.

 

There’s a sudden rush of frustration welling up in his chest, because he knows- they can do better. _They_ as in the team and _they_ as in _them,_ because today had been bullshit, today hadn’t been _right._

 

It’s not without trepidation that he approaches the door, but at least he’s sure of what he has to do.

 

Gary’s hand has just reached out to knock when suddenly it crashes open, and Carra barges in like a force of nature. He’s saying something loudly but Gary doesn’t hear it, all his attention consumed by the door smacking him directly in the face.

 

Everything gets a bit blurry and panicky for a few moments after that. Gary is vaguely aware of screaming at Carra, and of Carra’s mouth in a perfect ‘o’ of horror, dragging him to the bathroom where they have a small emergency with the blood that had begun to flow from Gary’s nose almost immediately upon the violent contact with the door.

 

Gary yells for a bit more along the lines of _I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU BROKE MY NOSE, CARRAGHER_ and Carra yells back that _IT ISN’T BROKEN CALM DOWN GARY YOU’LL BE FINE_ , as well as peppering in a few frantic apologies here and there, and in the mess of shouting and loo roll being flung about in an attempt to prevent the bathroom from looking like a crime scene, Gary realises two things. One, that his nose probably isn’t broken, and two, that he’s sort of missed yelling at Carra.

 

It’s a bit of a strange realisation to come to, especially when Carra is at that moment carefully prodding at his nose to assure them both of the _not-broken_ part. His fingers are surprisingly delicate, and he manipulates Gary’s face with an ease born of long familiarity around broken noses. Gary lets himself go quiet as Carra works, sodden face flannel in one hand and his gaze focused, two high spots of colour in his cheeks from the screaming match and his collar all rumpled.

 

The air isn’t charged between them, in fact it’s so relaxed that it makes Gary tense all the same. He opens his mouth, meaning to say something about the team, the one they both lead, or how shit today had been or _something_ about whatever he had needed to talk to Carra about, but what comes out instead is all wrong.

 

“You wanted to kiss me, that morning, didn’t you?”

 

Carra doesn’t say anything immediately, choosing instead to press the flannel against his face. “It’s not broken,” he says steadily, completely ignoring Gary. “But there’s gonna be a mark. You should get yourself some ice to put on for the rest of the evening. Wouldn’t want people to talk.”

 

And that’s it; Gary’s had enough of this bullshit. He’s in the bathroom with Carra close enough for their shirts to brush against each other when they exhale. He’s worried and off-kilter and his nose hurts, and now Carragher is here, seemingly talking in circles and refusing to answer him. As confusing and complicated as everything had seemed before what Gary is beginning to think of as _the incident_ in his head, he’d much preferred Carra being straightforward with him.

 

It might be the time to take matters into his own hands.

 

“I wanted to kiss you too.”

 

The veneer of calm slips away and Carra sort of sags against the sink, one hand reaching up to scrub at his face. He looks tired and defeated and Gary doesn’t know what put that expression on his face -the match or the day or the whole situation- but he wants it gone right now.

 

“We’re not having this conversation in here,” Carra says finally.

 

Gary narrows his eyes. “How do I know you won’t get back out the moment we leave this room?”

 

Carra rolls his eyes and huffs, but there’s nothing really behind it and he seems more tired than annoyed or anything else, not even the kind of mock offended that they usually whipped each other up into while bickering.

 

“Scout’s honour,” he says dryly.

 

They step back out into Gary’s room and Gary sits on the bed, still holding the wet flannel to his face although he’s fairly certain the bleeding has been stemmed for the time being. Carra hovers in front of him, shifting from foot to foot.

 

“So the match was a disaster,” he starts, but Gary interrupts him.

 

“No, that’s backing out, what happened to scout’s honour?”

 

“I’m getting there, Gary, give me a bleedin’ second alright?” Carra rolls his eyes again, this time a bit more like his usual self. “Again. Match. Disaster. I dunno if you blame me for throwing you off or something but honest to christ, Gary, I thought it’d be better, y’know, if I didn’t.”

 

“I don’t understand a thing you’re saying,” Gary says impatiently. “Stop talking in obscure half-sentences and actually tell me what you mean, you lumbering idiot.”

 

“Fuck’s sake- yeah, alright, so I wanted to kiss you! That morning! Probably would’ve if the phone hadn’t gone off! But I didn’t, because I thought it’d make a mess of things, with us working together and the team and not knowing if you- if you actually, well, wanted that or whatever and then everything went to shit anyway so I might as well have gone and gotten it over with!”

 

His words are blurring together at the end due to the godawful combination of Carra’s accent and exasperation but the sentiment gets across, with a healthy dose of anger.

 

And then it’s Gary who kisses him, because damned if he’s going to let this Scouse maniac have the last word. He drops the flannel on the bed and grabs Carra by the shirtfront instead, hauling himself up off the bed and kissing Carra firmly on the lips. His nose twinges as it brushes Carra’s cheek but Gary takes no mind, more concerned with the fact that he’s _actually kissing Jamie Carragher_ than with much else.

 

“What’s that all about?” Carra asks breathlessly when they break apart, and Gary smacks the side of his head lightly.

 

“Said I wanted to kiss you too, didn’t I?”

 

“Yeah, I s’pose you did.” Carra says, a slow grin beginning to spread across his face. Gary can feel a corresponding grin of his own begin to grow, and Carra’s slightly bent over awkwardly over him and it’s a little bit embarrassingly perfect, really.

 

Carra shakes his head. “Can’t believe your phone going off that morning nearly made us lose the match, Gary. Honest, you should be sacked for that.”

 

“Don’t make me punch you,” Gary warns. “Then we’d both show up with bruises and the press would start circulating rumours that we were abusing each other.”

 

“Ah, I can think of better things to do with your hands,” Carra says with a lascivious smirk, and Gary somewhat loses his train of thought.

 

*

 

They’ve got the afternoon to themselves, so of course they spend it over tactical plans, speeches and contingency plans. And every once in awhile their eyes meet over the papers, or their hands brush against each other and it’s not jumpy but welcome. It’s not uncomfortable but right.

 

Carra gets them coffee and Gary thanks him with a kiss and a cheeky hand tucked under his button up, against the muscles that Carra is so proud of. Gary gets heated and starts ranting over something or the other, turning red and splotchy, and Carra leans over with a hand on his shoulder, and he quiets. It's all a bit too horribly romantic for two old idiots and yet here they are. And it’s not terrible. It’s actually kind of nice.

 

They face the press together, teeth clenched in a best approximation of professionalism and their knees pressed up against each other under the table, a warm, steadying contact. It’s as brutal as they imagined, every question edged in cynicism, accusation after accusation.

 

“We’re in the semi-finals for the first time after twenty years and all they want to talk about is how awful everything was, how wrong every decision,” Gary confesses to Scholesy over the phone after. “I wanted to smash their faces in.”

 

“I was surprised Carragher didn’t,” Scholesy says dryly. “But you know things were pretty bad. You won’t get through the next round like that, no way.”

 

“I know,” Gary says, exchanging a glance with Carra who’s just cracked open their adjacent door. “But things will be better in the next match, you’ll see.”

 

“I hope so, for your sake,” Scholesy says, and Gary grins at the mental image of his face, scrunched up in worry, but trying not to show it. “Say hello to Carragher for me.”

 

“Why would you want me to say hello to Jamie?” Gary asks, too quickly, shrugging when Carra looks up from his paper.

 

Scholesy laughs. “Try that on someone who hasn’t known you forever,” he says “Try not to keep your players awake, that’ll make it all worse. G’night, Gaz.”

 

Gary stares at his phone for a little while, shocked speechless, enough for Carra to call his name with a hint of worry from where he’s perched on the sofa.

 

“Scholesy knows about us,” he says, “I almost think he was trying to tell me that he approves.”

 

Carra makes an approving noise in his throat. “Did he have any insight?”

 

“Just that we shouldn’t keep the lads awake with noisy sex.”

 

“Of course,” Carra snorts, “who’d have thought that Scholes of all people would have a sense of humour.”

 

“He does, unfortunately. Do you want to start on our pre-match speech for tomorrow?”

 

“Yeah,” Carra says, pulling out another sheet of paper with his surprisingly even penmanship all over it, “I wrote down what I remembered of Stevie’s half-time speech at Istanbul.”

 

Gary takes the offered piece of paper carefully, feeling an unexpected bolt of reverence. This was obviously something very important to Carra.

 

“Isn’t this supposed to be a club secret or something? Won’t you get kicked out of some exclusive Scouser society for showing me this?”

 

“I cleared it with Stevie beforehand,” Carra shrugs. “He said it was okay to ‘show it to my Manc boyfriend if he promises not to share it with his Manc friends’. Do you promise?”

 

“Yeah, sure,” Gary says. “Why are we friends with them again?”

 

“Just good luck I suppose,” Carra says and reaches for his laptop.

 

*

 

The next game, they’re incredible. But it’s still almost not enough.

 

“We’re putting Ibe in,” Carra whispers to him, frowns when Gary starts shaking his head. “This could be a long one. We need a fresh pair of legs.”

 

“But his form…” Gary starts, and then someone fouls Chambers just outside the box and they have to go yell for a while. “Okay, we’ll do it,” he says after, significantly more hoarse. “I’ll trust you.”

 

Carra’s right. It ends up going to penalties.

 

They huddle together on the bench, tense and nervous, watching their players line up with worry.

Carra suddenly feels something cold and clammy grab his hand. It’s Gary, tense and flushed, and he clutches onto Carra’s fingers like a lifeline.

 

“Are you seriously holding my hand right now?” Carra hisses in his direction, eyes firmly glued on the action.

 

“Yes, okay, shut the fuck up,” Gary hisses back, tightening his grip like he’s afraid Carra’s going to let go. “Just let me have this. Hendo’s having a go, I’ve never been so nervous in my life.”

 

Jordan doesn’t miss. And before they know it, they’re racing down the pitch and yelling their heads off, right before they hit the bodies in a massive group hug.

 

The picture is in all the papers the next day, of them running down the pitch, a boundless, savage joy in their grins and their hands entwined between them.

 

*

 

England is in the final.

 

The nation is in shock. Europe is in shock. The whole world is in shock. The nation of dismal disappointments, almost predisposed to underperform, has exceeded all expectation after decades of misery. And it’s done so under the two unlikeliest people.

 

Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville, bitter enemies turned co-managers, have turned England into a force to be reckoned with. It’s a weighty statement, perhaps a bit too serious, but it’s in all the papers in some variant, and to be honest, they’ve deserved it.

 

The date approaches and so the pressure rises. It seems like a miracle but Gary, watching from the sidelines as Jamie effortlessly keeps pace with the players in training while also shouting at the top of his lungs at the same time, knows it’s not.

 

It’s in the way Carra sends him a glance and Gary immediately knows what he’s trying to communicate. It’s Rashford laughing with Chamberlain over something or the other, and Henderson holding out a hand to pull Carrick onto his feet. It’s togetherness in spite of loyalties. Belief that you can build something even out of rivalry.

 

Somewhere in all these months they’ve all spent together they’ve become something like a team. They’re scrappy. And they’re hungry. And they’ve only got one shot.

 

*

 

The day of the final dawns bright and blue-skied. Gary wakes up with his head tucked against Carra’s collarbone and a bunch of paper stuck between them on the bed. His phone vibrates quietly. There are probably half a dozen encouraging messages on it from everyone he knows. He doesn’t plan on looking at them at all today.

 

Above him, Carra twitches in his sleep and blinks his eyes open. Gary allows himself a moment, just a brief moment, of calm, because it’s likely to be the only one he’s going to get today.

 

“You ready?” Carra asks, smiles, all soft and tired around the edges. He’s got deep shadows under his eyes. After this, the two of them should go a vacation. Find a bed and just sleep for a week.

 

“Let’s go win ourselves a trophy” Gary says, and almost believes it.

 

*

  


It goes like this.

 

22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes, plus some on the side.

 

In the 91st minute, an England player finds himself alone in front of the goalkeeper.

 

Maybe it’s Daniel Sturridge, his hip patched together by titanium and modern science, hairline fractures in his knees, in his ankles, in his heart. Maybe it’s Theo Walcott, with ‘potential’ hung around his neck like a shackle. Maybe it’s Marcus Rashford, old enough to be nearing the front of the queue to be England’s next great hope, all in a row to shoulder a nation of expectation, maybe rising to that expectation at last.

 

Or maybe it’s one of the other boys, raised under the island’s cloudy skies, playing football for hours after school in the freezing rain.

 

The ball swishes into the net. That part is simple. That part has always been simple, in every back alley, in every dusty or muddy pitch, on bruising asphalt or the greenest grass.

 

Three minutes later, the whistle blows. It’s over. Dreams are made and dreams are crushed, all in those three minutes.

 

*

 

The whistle blows. The two managers clash into a hug, screaming incoherently at each other, and for once it doesn’t matter because the whole of England is screaming, howling its victory into the warm dark evening.

  


And this hug is like that one ages ago, after they'd qualified when no one really thought they had it in them ("Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher? They barely got along on television, how're they going to make anything out of England?"), but at the same time it's completely different because Gary's aware of his cheek pressed tightly against Carra's shoulder and Carra can feel Gary's chest rise and fall in exhilarated breaths.

 

They're both entirely aware of each other and in that moment they realise just how much they always have been, and it's something else entirely to think that about what's between them now.

 

It’s quite a joint epiphany to have in the middle of a football pitch, after you’ve just won the European Championship.

 

But then again, that's where it all comes back to, isn't it?

 

Maybe years ago they stood almost just like this, red faced and snarling, just seconds from a yellow each and that focus, that awareness, that feeling, hasn't changed all that much, when you think about it. Except now the hands are around Gary's shoulders, twisting him closer instead of away and Carra's lips are on his temple like a caress.

 

A moment later, the players mob them, burying them under a group hug, elated

Everything after is a blur, the medals, the ceremony, the trophy, the screaming noise of the pitch.

 

The press asks them if they're doing a post match analysis and Carra laughs and says 'not today' even if Gary looks mighty tempted. He takes the offered champagne instead.

 

And during the course of the evening, long and loud and chaotic, if the two celebrating managers keep mysteriously disappearing and no one seems to knowing exactly where they are, well it’s just a hectic mass of people screaming and laughing and dancing, and it’s hard to keep track.  And if they only appear in two of the official photos taken of the celebrations, both times suspiciously rumpled, they’ve only just won England’s first major trophy in over fifty years. Anyone would have their hair sticking up wildly, their collar unbuttoned and lopsided, their eyes dazzled.

 

They've been celebrating. So the general disarray isn't terribly out of place.

 

 

 


End file.
